“It is to harde for my lernyng”: Making Sense of Annotations in Brut Manuscripts

Through analysis of the patterns and layers of annotation in the Middle English Prose Brut manuscript now known as the Dartmouth Brut, I consider what the manuscript’s development over time reveals about annotation itself as a collaborative activity with a tradition of its own, grounded in widely held habits of reading and writing. Recognition of such factors is essential to assessing annotation (or its absence) as potential evidence for the interests of individual readers. I conclude with discussion of the promise and hazards of manuscript digitization for the study of annotation.